


Fathoms Below

by Saucery



Series: Far, Far Away [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alliances, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst and Humor, Bisexuality, Castles, Comedy, Crack, Crossover, Diplomacy, Environmentalism By Any Other Name Would Be As Green, FINSTOCK IS A CRAB OKAY, Fairy Tales, Interspecies, LIKE AN ACTUAL CRAB, LOUDLY, Little Mermaid, M/M, Merboys, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology - Freeform, Nipple-Shells, Nipples Are Funny, Non-Explicit Sex, Ocean, Pining, Princes & Princesses, Pseudo- History, Rescue, Ridiculous, Romance, Royalty, Silly, Supernatural Elements, Surreal, THAT SINGS, The Adventures of Sourprince and Merboy, The Author is Clearly Insane, Transformation, True Love, Underwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An absolutely shameless fusion with <i>The Little Mermaid</i>. Shh, just come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathoms Below

**Author's Note:**

> This is legit how the pool scene played out in my head. No joke.

* * *

  
Art by **[likeabook](http://likeabook.tumblr.com/post/25741151820/oh-hey-um-says-someone-which-is-ridiculous)**.

* * *

 

The wave sweeps him under like a great tongue into the belly of a roaring beast - for the sea roars, in his ears, and bursts across his tongue in a flood of blood-warm salt. The fancy brocade he'd been forced into for the celebration weighs him down, sodden as a sack of mud, his cloak tangling around his ankles. His overly-heavy and fucking _useless_ decorative sword is shackled to his waist like a manacle, studded with precious stones that gleam dully in the dark water, malicious as demon-eyes. Derek frees himself from the sword - and the cloak - in a desperate twist of limbs, but he's still drowning, lungs aflame, vision dimming.

The violence of the surface fades away as he sinks deeper and deeper. The coldness of the sea grows still around him, the currents now buffeting him gently, a cat's paws toying with a dying mouse.

He'd dead. As good as. He knows it, but refuses to welcome his death with any of the goddamn grace they've been trying to 'educate' into him; he kicks and chokes and struggles against it, wrathful at the pointlessness of this, the stupidity of it, that he should die this way, here, instead of on a battlefield, protecting his people.

This kind of death is -

It's -

"Oh, hey, um," says someone, which is ridiculous, because he shouldn't be able to hear anyone underwater, "so this is awkward. I'm kind of not supposed to be here, but you're kind of not supposed to be drowning, so, uh. 'Scuse me," and then a pair of arms is scooping him up.

*

Derek wakes up on a beach. And not just any beach, but a beach ringed by distinctive cliffs and a very particular ivory tower looming in the distance, glittering in the sunlight. It's the Beacon. Of Beacon Hills.

Which means this is a beach on the mainland, thank god, and he can probably hike to the castle or hitch a ride on a passing merchant-cart, once he finds the nearest road.

He has vague memories of someone rescuing him, but that couldn't have been real, because people can't talk underwater. It must've been one of those near-death hallucinations. Not like he hasn't had them before, although it's usually on drier land, with an arrow or two sticking out of his back. Fucking Argents.

Derek retches up some water and turns more fully onto his stomach. He braces himself on his elbows, palms stinging with salt and hot sand, and tries to get up.

And fails.

And tries.

And fails, again.

"Whoa, Die Hard, take it easy. You've practically coughed up a lung, okay?"

Derek whips around. Or he _tries_ to whip around, but he's too weak and rubbery to manage anything more than an aborted flail that ends with him right back where he started, down on the sand.

There's a -

There's -

"Don't look at me like I molested you, or something! I didn't even give you mouth-to-mouth... much. Er. Seriously, I just did it to save your life. No bad-touch. Promise."

Derek stares. That's - that's a rock, fine, that's perfectly normal, to have a rock on a beach, but on top of that rock is a...

Is a...

There's a _tail_ , with _fins_ on it, and scales the color of teal-tinged silver, and there's a boy attached _to_ said tail, and that's -

That can't be a merboy. Just. No. He's still hallucinating. He must be.

The boy squints at him. "You all right? I mean, sorry, clearly you're not all right, just - you sort of look concussed. A little. Or a lot. Not sure how it works with you humans, but the last time Scott looked like that, he'd brained himself pretty bad on some coral." The kid flicks up his tail, waving it in front of Derek's face. "How many fins?"

Derek... hasn't stopped staring.

"Look, man, they ain't that difficult to count. Unless you do have a concussion, and... should I get my dad's physicians up here? I'll be grounded for eternity if my dad finds out where I've been, but - I can't let you die just to preserve my own delinquency. How many fins?"

"Two," croaks Derek, at last, because even if none of this is real and he's hallucinating - which is becoming harder and harder to believe, the more the kid talks - Derek's mind could never be creative enough to come up with all that _blabber_  - even then, he doesn't want to take a chance on this kid's... doctors. Merdoctors? Shit. Derek's human; they'll want to chain him up and experiment on him. Derek's sure that's what the Argents would do if they ever found a mermaid, anyway.

Or a... a merboy.

They're meant to be extinct. How is this even -

"Good," says the boy, brightly. "Gave me one hell of a shock, you did. There I was, minding my own business - okay, snooping on you humans, can you blame me? You're _interesting_ \- when suddenly, your ship catches fire and you're dropping like a stone."

"Did they... I thought they would've..." He'd been certain they'd put the fire out. In fact, it was in putting the fire out and getting everyone onto lifeboats that Derek had gone overboard, in the first place.

"What, your friends? They're fine. Don't worry. Charred around the edges, but fine. I saw 'em getting away in tiny boats; they'll be back looking for you, though. Maybe. Hopefully."

Definitely. He's the heir. "Do you know what I am?"

The boy tilts his head. "Handsome. No fins. Trouble breathing in water." He shrugs. "You're human, right?"

"No, not - well, that, _too_ , but." He manages to sit up and square his shoulders, firming his voice with imperial authority. "I'm a prince. Prince Derek of the Hales. Heir Apparent of Beacon Hills."

"Yeah?" The merboy seems unimpressed. Actually, he seems more interested in Derek's body, the way he keeps stealing furtive glances at the torn gaps in Derek's white silk shirt, but Derek lets him look, because it's not like Derek isn't staring at the gills on the sides of the boy's neck. They're both alien to each other, and who knows when they'll next get a chance to see specimens of each other's species? "Same here."

Derek's expectations evaporate. "What?"

"Son of Triton. King of the sea. My name's Stiles, by the way. With an, um. An 'i'."

A merboy sea-prince. Named Stiles.

Perhaps Derek's gaping, because the merboy - Stiles - rushes to reassure him. "It's not a big deal. Uh. Unless my dad finds out I've ditched Finstock, again. Which he won't, because Finstock will keep his crabby mouth shut unless he wants to get fired, so."

"Crabby?"

"Huh? Oh, he's a crab. It's funny, 'cause of his name, get it? Finstock. But he doesn't have any fins. Heh."

A... a crab. Derek very determinedly does _not_ clutch his head. Or find a stone to repeatedly bash his own head with, thereby restoring sanity to the world. Speaking of sanity... as Derek's eyes drift down the boy's pale, glistening skin, past the delicate gills darkening to a soft, strangely obscene pink at his throat, he sees - "You have seashells," says Derek, dumbly. "On your nipples."

Stiles laughs. His gills flutter, and the sight of them makes Derek's breath catch, for some reason. "Man, you really don't censor yourself, do you? Since you're a prince, I bet they keep trying to teach you how to talk subtle, and stuff. You know. Diplomatic. God knows Finstock drives himself 'round the bend, trying to teach me."

"I - " Derek can't drag his eyes away. "I'm sorry, I - "

"Nah, it's okay. These?" Stiles cups the shells where they cling to him. They're two perfect clamshells, ribbed and flared and sparkling, the same teal-silver as his scales. "They're just clothing."

"Clothing." For a male? "Aren't those just for the women?"

"Why? Don't guys have nipples, too?"

That... is an excellent point. "I see."

"Plus, we merpeople?" Stiles's voice drops dramatically. "Our nipples have hypnotic powers. No man can look upon them and keep his sanity. That's why we have to keep 'em covered."

Derek jerks his gaze away, alarmed. "Oh."

There's a silence, and then Stiles says, in a tremulous voice that's obviously holding back laughter, "You do know that was a joke, right? Tell me you know that was a joke."

"Of course I knew," Derek scowls, and swings his eyes back to glare pointedly at the seashells.

Stiles doubles over, giggling. His tail flaps. "Dude, you're just - "

"Don't. Call me. Dude."

"Sorry, sorry. Ask me anything. I won't squink you again, promise." Then, noticing Derek's confused expression, he clarifies: "Squid-ink. It's like, er. Bull...shit? I think that's the surface equivalent. I won't bullshit you again."

"Fine. What about your hair?"

"What about my hair?"

"It's... short."

Stiles looks surprised, then runs a hand over his cropped hair, shining with salt crystals as bright as diamonds. "What, this?"

"Mermai - merpeople always have long hair. According to. To legends."

"You landfolk have _legends_ about us? Awesome! But why the long hair?"

"I." He has no idea. "It must've seemed... more mysterious. More wild."

"It's impractical, is what it is. Can't see in front of you if your hair's all... floaty around you, yeah? You'll end up colliding with a shark or swimming into a ravine. Lydia keeps her hair long, but she's vain that way. Vain and hot, she's veryveryvery hot, but vain. Not that I don't like that about her, but... vain. Uh. She's a genius, though, so maybe she deserves to be?"

"No one deserves to vain," Derek snaps, feeling oddly nettled. "Your taste in women is as lacking as - "

" - my taste in humans I rescue?" Stiles smirks.

"Vanity is never 'deserved'," Derek grits out. "Arrogance is not attractive."

"Mm-hm. Tell that to the girls chasing you around court. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Are you calling me arrogant?"

"No, I'm just saying you get hit on by people who find arrogance attractive. What?"

But Derek's too busy glowering to even _think_. He's never been spoken to this insolently before. Not even by another prince; none of the neighboring kingdoms would dare to offend the Heir Apparent of Beacon Hills.

Except...

This kid is a prince. Not that being a prince of seaweeds and mollusks means anything. "I'm sure you wouldn't know arrogance if it bit you," he drawls, sharp as acid. "Given how many things with teeth you have, down there."

"Ooh. Humor. Nice. Didn't think you had it in you."

"That wasn't humor."

"C'mon, don't be such a Sourprince. Although I guess your ability to use sarcasm's a good sign of health, so... I'll be going, now? Dad must've sent out a search party. He probably thinks the cephalopods have staged a rebellion, taken me hostage and are molesting me with their tentacles as we speak."

Derek can't even begin to deal with that last sentence, so he ignores it and focuses on the rest. "My people will have a search party out for me, because I went missing under traumatic circumstances. But you? A search party seems like overkill after such a short absence - "

"I've been gone for six hours."

"Six - " Derek startles, then notices the angle of the sun. Mid-morning. And the ship had caught fire at two or three hours past midnight, which means... the boy stayed with him the entire time? Even while he was passed out? "Why didn't you go back?"

Stiles looks at him like he's crazy - as if anything can be crazier than a merprince. "And leave you to die? When you're all... fragile?"

"I'm not _fragile_."

"You couldn't breathe. In water."

"My kind are not _supposed_ to breathe in water."

"For a while there, you couldn't breathe out of the water, either."

"Won't you die if you stay out in the sun too long?" Derek challenges.

"I'm not a vampire."

"I meant, out of the... the water."

The kid's still giving him the crazy-eye. "I also have a nose. In case you hadn't noticed. See, it's right here. In the middle of my face." He taps it. "Happy? I can't walk with these flippers, sure, not without wobbling like crazy - yeah, I've tried - but I don't need gills to stay alive. Not that it ain't sweet that you're all worried about me - vengefully worried, even - "

"I. Am not. Worried."

"Do humans always talk in full-stops? I swear, you use more full-stops than actual words. It's like Morse code. And yeah, I know what Morse code is. I read. Whatever makes it onto seaside shipwrecks, anyway. Damn, those things're full of booty. And I don't mean _booty_ -booty, like, not booty-call booty, because ew, skeletons, but, y'know, booty. Scrolls. Maps. Captain's logs. And I don't mean logs, like, not _logs_ -logs - "

"How long did it take you to bring me ashore?" Derek cuts in, before he's subjected to another second - or another eternity, because even a second is an eternity - of this madness.

"Two hours."

"You swam - " For two hours? Even for a merman, that wasn't a small duration of time to be swimming with a dead weight, against the tide, in pitch darkness - for they must've reached the shore before dawn. The thought of someone going to such lengths for him, without even knowing his rank or his importance, is... upsetting, and humbling. Perhaps upsetting because it's humbling. But there's a redress for this; there always is. Every royal's life comes at a price. A high price. The Argents' assassins can certainly attest to that. "What would you like?"

"Hm?" The boy seems to be momentarily distracted by his fins, which he appears to be grooming, with long, careful strokes, picking them clean of sand. The spaces between his fingers are webbed, transparent as lace, and the line of his neck, as he leans downward, is unnervingly graceful for a creature so - so infuriating.

"What do you want?"

Finally, the kid glances up. "Um." He scrunches his nose. "World peace? I dunno, is this a beauty pageant?"

"What. Do you. Want. You must want something."

The boy blinks at him, then blushes and looks away. His tail twitches nervously. "I don't... Nothing, all right? Fine, maybe candy - like that brown stuff with the pink filling inside it that I found washed up in a box on an island, once. I'd like that. Why?" His eyes brighten. "Have you seen any?"

Seen it? He's been offered Turkish Delights after every meal, along with mints, sugars and pralines. He always sends them back uneaten, but that's not - "That's not enough," Derek says.

"Enough for what?"

"For my life."

Stiles gawks at him. "Crap. You guys _are_ fragile. If I'd known - I could've - you need candies? To stay alive?"

"No, that's - "

"How much time do you have? Should I go and get - "

" _No_ ," Derek growls, fed up with this nonsense. "I don't. Need candies. To survive."

"...aw. Not even a bit? It'd be sort of cool. Pathetic, but cool."

"Stiles."

"Yeah? Oh, hey, you said my name! Say it ag - "

"Your Highness. Prince of the sea."

"Okay, you're freaking me out, here. Do you always sound like you wanna kill someone when you're being polite? 'Cause I'm saying, that defeats the purpose of the whole politeness schtick."

"What. Do. You. Want."

"For you to stop psycho-glaring at me? Eep! I saved your life, remember? Maybe you could, and this is just a suggestion, be _grateful_ or something?"

"I am."

"You are? Gotta say, your gratitude looks like a death threat. With claws."

"I'm trying to be grateful. What do you want? In return for saving my life?"

The boy just... looks at him. As if he's so stunned, that's all he can do.

A suitable reaction, when one thinks of all the riches on offer. "I could offer you gold. From my own coffers. Anything you demand. Jewels. Precious gems. Vintage wines. Rare livestock. Purebreds of the finest blood. Horses - "

" _Horses_?" Stiles bursts out, and he seems... hurt, somehow. Which makes no sense, at all. "What would I do with horses? I live in the fucking sea! Unless you mean seahorses, in which case, fuck you, you can't trade 'em, they're like brothers to me!"

"I didn't - "

"You know what? Shove it. Finstock's always going on about how you're all barbarians up on the surface, and I never believed him - I even argued with him - but he was right. Do you think I swam two whole hours to this godforsaken beach, alone and away from my people into the land of humans who may hunt me, because I wanted your _gold_?"

This is rapidly spinning out of control. Derek had only intended to repay his debt, not to make his very debtor look so betrayed. "If what is in my coffers does not suffice - "

"You can take your 'coffers' and shove them up your ass. Derek."

"What I owe you - "

"All you owe me," the boy spits, "is a 'thank you,' dumbass! And that's the one thing you're incapable of!" He shakes himself, all over, as if to rid himself of filth. "Screw this, I'm outta here."

Stiles's tail curls and tenses, preparing for a leap - and in a surge of shocked, electric desperation that Derek can't even comprehend, he's up on his feet and grabbing the kid's arm, smooth and water-cool under his hands. "Wait. Wait, I - "

"Let _go_ of me."

"Thank you," he blurts, not sure what's going on or why he feels so ugly and hollow, but - "Thank you," he repeats, more quietly, when Stiles's eyes widen, when his whole body pauses. "Please, let me pay my debt to you. I didn't mean... to belittle you, or doubt your honor - "

Stiles snorts in disgust.

"But that might've been what I did, anyway." Derek swallows. "Come back here. A week from now, at this very time. You like scrolls, don't you? Reading? I'll bring you scrolls, and Turkish Delights, the stuffed candies you wanted, and we'll... talk. About whatever it is you read in the scrolls. I'll answer all your questions. Any of them. Just - promise to see me again. Please." He's never pleaded before. The word falls from his mouth, awkward and heavy, clumsy with the rust of disuse.

A peculiar emotion flashes across Stiles's face - quicksilver-fast and whirlpool-deep - and he pulls his arm away. "Whatever," he mutters, and leaps.

Derek staggers back, gasping, hit by the cold spray as Stiles dives into the water, not with a crash but with a barely audible splash, sleek as a dolphin, lovely as the arc of a knife. The vision burns itself into Derek's eyes - a curve of merboy against the sky, a sickle-song of skin and fin, arms outstretched and scales blinding in the sunlight, and then gone, in a mere whisper and a shift of current, vanishing into the depths.

Derek's heart hammers. His hands feel empty, useless.

And he wonders, suddenly, if he's ever truly grasped anything in his life.

 

* * *

**fin.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Fathoms Below](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2873192) by [Belayday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belayday/pseuds/Belayday), [Saucery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery)




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